Body Art

Title is something that I have been intrigued with from a tender age of twelve. When you are at that age, everything you do has to come with parents' consent. In asking Lmz to allow me to get my piercings of choice, I had promised her that I will do my best for PSLE.

What she did not expect was that I had asked for eight piercings at one shot. Yes, eight. That put me up to a grand total of ten piercings, and landed me into the discipline mistress' and principal's offices. If I had never mentioned that my time of rebelliousness came early, I am saying it now.

I had gotten my first two lobe piercings when I was five. My additional eight piercings were two helixes, two lobes and one tragus on the left, and two helixes and one tragus on the right. It was a horrible mistake to get so many at one shot, and all so close together – for when one swelled, the rest joined in. It took me about a month before I gave six up. They were the tragus and helix piercings, because they made my ears feel like a drum on all conscious hours, and had looked like they were never going to heal.

When I was in secondary school, I had tried getting two tragus piercings on one side at one shot, but it did not work out. Then, I got another helix piercing on my right ear and kept it.

When I was sixteen, I got my conch piercing. It was my first piercing that required a needle, and it did not hurt as much as I had expected it to. Before I enrolled into my junior college, I got my rook piercing and I found out that it is termed the most painful ear piercing for a reason. Both of these piercings took longer to heal, and used to get inflamed every now and then. They settled down after two years, thankfully.

When I was seventeen, I got my first ink, and my first (and last) surface piercing. I do not have any photos of my collar bone piercing because K left my spare Cybershot phone on the taxi when he was rushing to my place on one of the days (after only having it for two months maybe), and all that I have to show for that piercing now are two neat scars at the base of my collar bone.

This is a photo that I had grabbed from Pinterest, and mine had looked something like that. After getting a surface piercing, I would advise people against getting one. Getting the piercing itself was not the least bit painful. It is the part in which you have to look after it (need I mention all of your life) and make sure that it does not get inflamed or worse, rejected. I was in the soccer team then, and because of this piercing, I had refused to take part in quite a few drills during training. After seeing my coach's exasperated face for about ten times, and finally realising that I might not want to keep this baby in the long run, I decided to remove it.

You see, my conch piercing had used to be near the base of my ear, and it have since migrated to the middle. I could not imagine how it will be like, having to look after a surface piercing for the rest of my life. The chances of it migrating and getting rejected by my body in the long run is high, and the scars that come together with rejection will be a real mess to deal with.

This collar bone piercing is the last of its kind on my body, mainly because the shop that I had used to frequent in Tiong Bahru Plaza had closed down, and that ever since I have liaised myself with books again, I never really looked forward to having to babysit another piercing. Also, K does not like me getting more piercings as he hates how I wince in the first few weeks of getting a new one, and how it pains him that something is hurting me and yet he can not do anything about it (haha).

Other than the lip tattoo that I had gotten when I was eighteen, this is all. I can never put my love for body art into words, but I am thinking that this should be the last of it.